Phishing generally refers to the concept of tricking a computer user into submitting personal information to a bogus website. Phishing also refers to the techniques used to trick users. The personal information, such as generally private identifying information, login information for online banking, credit card numbers, and other valuable information, is often used to commit fraud, including identity theft.
One common phishing tactic is to send an email message to a large number of users. The identity of the message sender and the message content can be arranged to look like the source is a legitimate business. The message may indicate that the user needs to resubmit some personal data so that the business can continue to serve the user. The email message can contain a link to a bogus website that may look virtually identical to the pages offered by the legitimate site. Because links are difficult to read and can use foreign characters that look like normal characters to the user, users can be fooled into visiting the bogus website and providing valuable personal data.
The use of the same reference symbols in different drawings indicates similar or identical items.